


Secret Agent Scientist

by Malteaser



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Community: pacificrimkink, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 04:12:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1331455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malteaser/pseuds/Malteaser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt: Hermann, secret badass; He has something cool like a fencing saber installed in his cane and when someone fucks with them he kicks their ass and keeps talking like nothing happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secret Agent Scientist

Newt had been perfectly content to just hand over his phone and his wallet and let the scary spiky-haired dude that was even twitchier than he was run off, but Hermann was not.  
  
Hermann also apparently had a sword cane. Who knew?  
  
"Was zum Teuful?!" Newt shouted, as spiky dude shouted something in Cantonese that probably also translated as 'what the fuck'.  
  
Because seriously, _what the fuck_.   
  
"Sei still, Newton," Hermann hissed, and spoke Cantonese in low, threatening tones to the guy who he'd disarmed and was now holding at sword point.   
  
One of these days he was going to bite the bullet, accept that his shitty Mandarin didn't even count for shit in Hong Kong, and buy a fucking Rosetta Stone or something, seriously, except not, because learning to communicate with the Kaiju was, objectively speaking, more relevant to having the world not ending, and also was much cooler, even though Hermann was totally making Cantonese looking extremely cool and necessary and a little bit sexy right now.  
  
"Oh shit, you are with the PPDC," spiky dude said, suddenly switching to English. "Shit, shit, Chau is going to kill me. Chau is going to have _Fang_ kill me. I did not know, I swear. I thought you were with the BeunaKai."  
  
"Why would you think-"  
  
"It might have something to do with the fact that you have them tattooed onto every available inch of skin," Hermann said, still not dropping the sword.  
  
The spiky dude's head sort of bobbled as he tried to nod in agreement without actually moving his neck. "I am sorry, it was my mistake. Let me go, I'll make it up to you, right?"  
  
"Leave the gun here," Hermann said.   
  
For a moment the spiky dude looked like he was going to argue, but then he though better of it. "Yes, I will do that."  
  
Hermann lowered the sword. "Very well, then. Run."  
  
The guy ran.   
  
"Dude," Newt said. "That was awesome."  
  
Hermann rolled his eyes. "Could you pick up the other half of my cane and the gun, please?"  
  
"Uh, yeah, sure," Newt took a few moments to figure out where sheath had rolled and then, as Hermann reattached it, gingerly, picked up the gun between his thumb and forefinger.  
  
"Oh for heaven's sake," Hermann snapped, taking it from him with more force than strictly necessary. Newt watched as he unloaded the magazine, and then stuck both it and the gun itself into his pocket.   
  
"Okay, I know your secret now," he said.  
  
Hermann looked decidedly unimpressed. "What are you blithering on about now?"  
  
"Your secret," Newt said. "You've got a limp because you got shot on a mission for the BND, didn't you?"  
  
Hermann made a wordless noise of disgust and began to walk out on the main street they'd been traveling down when they were jumped.   
  
"Okay so it was MI- ow!" Newt yelped as Hermann hit him in the shins with his newly resheathed sword cane.   
  
"You are a child," he growled. Newt smirked, and badgered him the rest of the way home.

* * *

Newt found himself thinking about that cane a lot. Not in the manic sense of 'everything up until and including the chalk dust in your hair is turning me on right now' though, yeah, there's that too. But mostly in another sense.   
  
He didn't actually know why Hermann had that cane. He hadn't had it the first (disastrous) time they met, and had used it only intermittently when they first started working together. He probably could have looked it up, but honestly, Hermann would only respond in kind and no way in hell did he want to hand Hermann the kind of ammunition his medical files held. Still, he wondered. He wondered a lot- if things were different between them, maybe he could have just asked. Maybe Hermann would have told him.   
  
(He isn't having a manic episode, or at least not only a manic episode, or maybe just not a typical manic episode. Whatever. Does it matter? It's the end of the world, and he's either going to save it or go down swinging or maybe both, doesn't matter, either way, he's going to be remembered, people are going to pretend to know anything and everything about him in order to be associated in some way-)  
  
((Maybe this is an _apocalyptic_ episode, maybe this is just how people react when the world is dying. Or maybe the quetiapine is the only thing keeping him from a full-on psychotic break.))  
  
It doesn't make much of a difference now, he knows what he's doing: end with a bang, not a whimper, do not go gentle into that goodnight, today is a good day to die, when you can't run you crawl and when you can't crawl you find-  
  
"You drove me to this," Newt said.  
  
And not long after that he's drowned out by millions of years and trillions of lives all utterly alien and all pouring in from every direction at once.

* * *

When he said "You'd do that for me- with me?" he had forgotten all about ammunition, but he hadn't forgotten the cane.  
  
He doesn't chase the RABIT, doesn't go looking, but he doesn't forget either.

It took until they were waiting for the results of their scans to come back for him to start putting things (memories, fragments of Hermann's mind that had been copy+pasted into his) together.  
  
 _The garden shed is nearly falling down, but his grandmother lifted up a panel in the floor, and the room beneath it is strong and steady still. "This is where your grandfather hid me and my mother during the war."_  
  
 _The picture of his grandfather as a teenager, leaning on his cane. It had kept him from being conscripted, but why did he have it in the first place? Maybe he injured himself, so he could stay behind and keep Nana safe, yes, that must be it, must-_  
  
 _He tripped a fell for no good reason, sixth time in a month, he must be even more tired than he thought, God, he was so tired..._  
  
 _"He hated that first cane, but this one? This one he loved- kept it even after he'd moved on to using a wheelchair. It's got a secret, let me show you-"_  
  
 _"-these lesions are likely the cause of your lack of balance and fatigue Mr. Gottlieb-"_  
  
 _Research done, peer-reviewed studies found via the university's library "The prognosis for MS is generally better for those who are diagnosed young, have relapse-remittance type, and are female."_  
  
 _"You do have a family history Dr. Gottlieb, but it's not necessarily bad news. Your grandfather lived to 69- with modern advancement in medicine it's very likely that you will live a average lifespan._  
  
"It's your grandfather's!" Newt cried.  
  
Hermann jumped slightly, having apparently been lost in his (or, more likely, Newt's) thoughts. "What?"  
  
"Your cane. It's your grandfather's cane," Newt said.  
  
"You got that from the Drift, did you?" Hermann asked.  
  
"Actually no," Newt admitted. "I just got a lot of context, not that specific memory, really."  
  
Hermann shrugged.  
  
"Tell you what," Newt said. "If you fill in the blanks, I'll trade you one of mine."  
  
Hermann thought this over for a moment, and then leaned forward, the corner of his mouth twitching up slightly. "Very well. Where would you like to start?"  
  
The war was over. Ammunition was a lot less important now.


End file.
